What would you say if you learned that a police officer was shot and killed inside a mosque while on duty and that a movement to name a street after that officer ran into resistance from a local community board because the leadership of that mosque might be offended?

Whatever you would say, say it now because that is what’s happening.

Via NY Daily News:

Officer Phillip Cardillo was assigned to the 28th Precinct in Harlem when he was slain in the line of duty during an infamous, racially charged episode for which there has been no justice.

Now, more than 40 years later, the Police Department wants the block of W. 127th St. alongside the stationhouse named for Cardillo, who was 32, married and the father of an infant son when he was lured into a fatal ambush.

The designation would entail the placement of a street sign in memory both of Cardillo and of the seminal events that happened in the city’s history the night of April 14, 1972.

On the abundant merits, the NYPD’s request should be sailing through with universal acclamation.

But no.

Four decades later, the local community board, which has a say over such things, is balking out of misplaced concerns that some in the community might take offense.

If they do, so what?

Now is the time to do right in recognition of a brave man’s sacrifice and victimization.

The year 1972 was part of an era of raw racial conflict. Tensions often ran high between blacks and the police. Against that backdrop, Cardillo and three fellow officers responded to a report that a cop was in trouble in Nation of Islam Muhammed Mosque 7, then located on W. 116th St. and headed by Louis Farrakhan.

Despite Cardillo’s killer never being convicted, the Community Board is preventing the street being named in the officer’s name because… well, they want to make sure it’s ok with the leaders of Mosque 7.

Community Board 10 wants the NYPD to get assurances from leaders of Mosque 7, now located on W. 127th St., and from those of the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque, which occupies the 116th St. site, that they have no objections.

It would seem that the Community Board 10 could use an intervention. They really do need to come to grips with what’s truly afflicting them. Calling it ‘political correctness’ is like getting an alcoholic to admit he drinks too much without admitting he’s an alcoholic. Use of the term ‘political correctness’ is nothing more than a politically correct way of saying cowardice. Once the Community Board can admit to being cowards, they’re halfway home. Until then, they’re figurative street drunks:

h/t Jawa Report

Ben Barrack is a talk show host and author of the upcoming book, Unsung Davids